Abe’s Penny

Remember the days when you would receive postcards from friends in the mail (and by “mail” I mean that box that’s next to your door, which these days is filled only with junk mail and bills), maybe because they were on vacation somewhere? I don’t know about you, but seeing them “Twitter” something like “Checked in now. Seats 34C and D” is not quite the same experience as holding an actual postcard - even if the information on it is the same or comparable: “We had OK seats on the flight” (Theorists might now start long discussions about the “tangible”).

A while ago, I thought I wanted to do a postcard project, and I already had bought the postcards when, just the day after, I came across Abe’s Penny (thus confirming my second law of the internet: For every idea you have, you can find somebody online who has already done it.).

The idea behind Abe’s Penny is very simple: You give them money, they send you postcards in the mail. Mind you, not just ordinary postcards (that could be interesting, too: if you give me money and your address I promise I’ll send you a postcard that could be right out of “Boring Postcards” in the mail1,2). The postcards feature photographs by some artist plus text (sometimes poems) by other artists, such as, in the case above, photographs by Richard Gin and text by Mike Sacks.

You get four postcards per month, and it’s $48 for 6 months. That’s the money way to look at it. It’s fairly cheap, isn’t it? But a better way to look at it is to see that it’s a little art experience in the mail every week, and that’s actually quite cool.

1 No really. Ideally, you’d send me the money (any number of two-dollar bills, one would be enough, but any extra number will be appreciated) and your address in the regular mail - email me for details.2 Oh, and that’s not the original postcard idea I had…